John Rae's diaries

The old boys' network

THESE entertaining journals are ill-served by their title. The dust jacket and the title page carry different dates, and both are wrong. More importantly, John Rae, who died in 2006, would have been outraged by the implication that he was a typical “old boy”. A non-conformist by upbringing, educated at an unfashionable school, with a modest degree from Cambridge, where he won half-blues for swimming and water polo, he rejoiced in being an outsider, a maverick and a source of irritation to conventional, rugby-playing headmasters who disliked his “vulgar bounce and salesmanship”.

The handsome, charming, ambitious Rae may have been principally interested in selling himself, but he was devoted to Westminster, arguably London's finest private school, and he served it well at a difficult time. In April 1976, at an unpublicised meeting of eight major public schools, the heads dined in the warden's lodgings (dining is an essential part of such meetings) and discussed the threats posed by “rising fees, falling numbers and political hostility”. The unspoken agenda was that their schools must survive even if others went to the wall. While Rae was at Westminster the number of pupils increased by a third and girls were successfully integrated into the sixth form.

Headmasters must satisfy the conflicting demands of governors, colleagues, parents and pupils. Rae had his problems with interfering governors and unsatisfactory or disaffected teachers (one calls the boys “bastards”, another sounds off about Saturday-morning school), and he took trouble to prevent an alliance between them. However, most of his time was spent dealing with anxious or dissatisfied parents and ill-behaved boys. (No mention of naughty girls.)

His heart lay with his pupils. Time and care were devoted to selecting entrants to the school and to ensuring that they went on to the right Oxbridge college. In a capital city, with clever, independent-minded, day and weekly-boarding pupils, Westminster was peculiarly at risk from student rebellion and the easy availability of drugs. Rae dealt fairly and firmly with offenders; and noted how often the parents were separated and the father absent.

Rae considered stamina to be the key to success as a headmaster and he possessed remarkable energy. He enjoyed Westminster's unique situation at the heart of things, and made light of IRA bombs. There is lunch at Buckingham Palace (good for morale), dinner at Downing Street, encounters with five prime ministers, with the Dalai Lama, Len Hutton, Isaiah Berlin and John Cleese. He teaches history, writes books, chairs the Headmasters' Conference (his qualifications do not compare with those of the member who killed a German with his bare hands), patrols the yard on the last night of term. Rarely does he flag. One evening an avuncular boy carries him off to the pub. Another time his wife is dispatched to a dinner party alone whilst he slips out to see “The Sting”. There is little reference to family, and various deaths are recorded coolly and without sentimentality. As is his own retirement: “no frog in the throat”.